Clintons trial from
Jan 13WASHINGTON, Jan 9  The US
Senate has unanimously approved a historic impeachment
trial of President Bill Clinton, starting next week, but
left the issue of calling witnesses unresolved even as
the White House vowed to defend him vigorously.Rebel
commander
rejects ceasefireFREETOWN, Jan 9  The leader of a ruthless
guerrilla army roaming the streets of Sierra Leones
capital has rejected a proposed ceasefire.

Panel
blames US agencies for lapsesWASHINGTON, Jan 9  A government
probe into the August bombings of two US
embassies in East Africa has held several
security agencies responsible for security lapses
and has asked the security budget for embassies
be raised by $ 1.4 billion.

Spying
charges: Butler questions USAUNITED
NATIONS, Jan 9  Controversial UN Chief Arms
Inspector Richard Butler has sought an explanation from
the USA about reports that Washington used his inspectors
for its own spying purposes.

USA to maintain weapons superiorityWASHINGTON,
Jan 9  The USA has drawn up a strategy to maintain
its weapons superiority over potential enemies in a world
marked by fast spread of technology, a defence news
report said.

Tintin turns 70 on SundayBRUSSELS,
Jan 9  Tintin turns 70 on Sunday, and
though the cartoon character has almost outgrown
his target audience, children from seven to 77,
his appeal remains timeless.

Hillary
is not over-emotional, says motherWASHINGTON,
Jan 9  US First Lady Hillary Clinton does not
confide anything personal in her mother, the older woman
revealed in a rare interview out t his week, and she
isnt over-emotional.

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (PTI)
 The US Senate has unanimously approved a historic
impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, starting
next week, but left the issue of calling witnesses
unresolved even as the White House vowed to defend him
vigorously.

The trial will begin on
Wednesday with 13 House Republican prosecutors and Mr
Clintons defence team being given 24 hours each to
present their cases and Senators 16 hours to put
questions, according to the plan approved by 100-0 votes.

Following the decision,
the Senate Sergeant of Arms, Mr James Ziglar, delivered
the summons notifying Mr Clinton of the impeachment trial
to White House counsel Charles Ruff who received the
four-page document on behalf of the President.

Mr Clinton has to reply to
the summons, which outlines the charges against him
 perjury and obstruction of justice in the Monica
Lewinsky case  by noon on Monday.

The Senate, however, left
the issue of summoning the witnesses during the trial
unresolved, with a decision being taken to have a vote on
it, assuming the House votes to proceed with the trial.

The White House,
meanwhile, vowed to conduct a "vigorous, successful
and complete" defence of Mr Clinton.

White House special
counsel Greg Craig told reporters that Mr Clintons
defence team was optimistic and confident that the trial
would not go beyond the opening phase.

"The Senate has
decided how it wants to proceed. We respect that, and in
accordance with procedures adopted by the Senate, we plan
to present on behalf of the President a vigorous,
successful and complete defence," he said.

"We are optimistic
and confident that the Senators, once they see and hear
this defence in this opening phase of the trial, will
conclude that the articles (of impeachment) do not
justify or warrant conviction or removal from office. We
remain hopeful that this matter can be resolved
expeditiously and fairly," he said.

According to the Senate
plan, there will also be a vote on whether the witnesses
should be heard in closed or open session. All these
votes require only a simple majority in a House where the
Republicans control 55 out of 100 votes.

Only a vote to remove the
President from office requires a two-thirds majority.

It is reported that those
who contributed to the Senate decision included Democrats
Robert Byrd, Thomas Daschle who is the party leader in
the Senate, and Edward Kennedy.

What the White House
reportedly dreads is the possibility of former White
House intern Lewinsky testifying in public on her alleged
affair with Mr Clinton.

If that happens and she
contradicts Mr Clintons grand jury testimony, he
could be in real trouble, according to analysts.

Meanwhile the summons
notifying President Bill Clinton of his impeachment trial
in the Senate arrived at the White House on a snowy
evening, but the President was not home.

White House counsel
Charles Ruff received the four-page document on Mr
Clintons behalf in the White House Staff
Secretarys office, and there was little ceremony to
the event, White House spokesman Amy Weiss said.

A White House photographer
took a picture, but it would not be released, she said.

Ms Weiss said it was not
known whether Mr Clinton could see the summons, which
demanded a response by Monday evening.

The summons was affixed
with a Senate seal and witnessed by US Senator Strom
Thurmond, the 96-year-old South Carolina Republican
serving as President Pro Tempore of the Senate.

It spells out the two
articles of impeachment approved against Mr Clinton by
the US House of Representatives, on charges of perjury
and obstruction of Justice in connection with the
Presidents affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The stern language in the
summons makes it clear that the fate of the most powerful
man in the world lies now in the hands of the 100
Senators who sit as jurors in his impeachment trial.

FREETOWN, Jan 9 (AP)
 The leader of a ruthless guerrilla army roaming
the streets of Sierra Leones capital has rejected a
proposed ceasefire and vowed his fighters would continue
an offensive against government troops.

Gen Sam Bockarie of the
Revolutionary United Front announced that within 24 hours
his forces would attack the western parts of Freetown
still under government control and then move against the
international airport at nearby Lungi, an important
military base.

Already, parts of this
West African capital have been set ablaze.

There is no
ceasefire, General Bockarie told the Associated
Press in a telephone interview. We will take the
rest of the city and save our country, he added.

General Bockarie has been
demanding the release of the rebels patriarch,
Foday Sankoh, who has been jailed by the government and
sentenced to death on charges of high treason. He
dismissed the seven-day ceasefire announced on Thursday
by Sankoh and elected President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah.

We do not recognise
Kabbah, we will not talk to Kabbah, he is ousted,
General Bockarie declared.

With eastern and central
parts of Freetown in rebel hands, UN efforts to mediate
peace in this nation of 4.5 million people have fallen on
deaf ears.

Sierra Leones
defence forces have failed to dislodge the insurgents,
who have successfully employed such tactics as hiding
among civilians and using them as human shields. The
latest fighting erupted a month ago.

The UN, which pulled out
of Sierra Leone earlier in the week, returned for a few
hours on Friday to evacuate its last remaining
representative and aid workers from other relief
agencies.

What is important is
that there is a ceasefire, said the UNs
special envoy to Sierra Leone, Mr Francis Okelo, who
returned for brief consultations with government leaders
before heading back to neighbouring Guinea.

The West African defence
force that is defending Kabbahs government has been
scrambling to reinforce its positions with supplies and
arms.

Aboard a military
transport helicopter, gunmen at the ready peeked through
potholes on Friday as the chopper moved ashore and
skimmed a small hill, banked hard to the left and settled
to the ground in a roaring blast of dust and sand.

For the return trip across
the water to Lungi airport, a dozen civilians and
government functionaries crammed into the Russian-made
MI-8 to flee Sierra Leones shattered capital.

Hundreds of rebels, who
advocate a vague mixture of agrarian democracy and
revolutionary socialism, battled their way into Freetown
earlier this week.

The result is a city in
flames. Homes, schools, a hospital and even police
headquarters have been burned. Terrified residents have
been dragged from their homes.

Civilians who managed to
escape are worried about their uncertain future.

If they take over,
they will kill us all,  said Saidu Koroma,
who escaped the city to Lungi aboard a military
evacuation flight on Friday. Id rather be
dead, Id rather they kill everyone in the country
before we see them in power, he added.

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (PTI)
 A government probe into the August bombings of two
US embassies in East Africa has held several security
agencies responsible for security lapses and has asked
the security budget for embassies be raised by $ 1.4
billion.

The commission headed by
retired Admiral William Crowe, former Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, yesterday condemned the
collective failure of the US Government over the past
decade to prepare for terrorist attacks of the kind
that levelled the embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam.

Responsibility for
this failure can be attributed to several administrations
and their agencies, the National Security Council, and
the Office of Management and Budget as well as the US
Congress, it said in a report.

The Crowe panel, appointed
by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, recommended the
government should spend $ 1.4 billion a year over the
next 10 years to improve security at US embassies.

That is in addition to the
$ 1.4 billion added to the State Departments
security budget by the Congress and the Clinton
Administration after the August bombings.

The panel asked that all
overseas US facilities should be brought up to the
standards recommended in 1985 by a similar panel headed
by former CIA Deputy Director Bobby Inman.

Systematic and
institutional failures in Washington were responsible for
a flawed process for assessing threat levels worldwide
which underestimated the threat of terrorism in
Nairobi, it said.

The Crowe panel said US
Ambassador in Nairobi Prudence Bushnell had drawn
attention to terrorist threats well before the bombings.

US officials, it charged,
had tended to ignore general warnings and relax their
guard in the absence of intelligence reports describing
specific dangers.

Despite that the US marine
barracks and US Embassy in Beirut had been blown up in a
truck bombing in 1996, US officials failed to take
precautions against such truck bombings in Nairobi and
Dar Es Salaam, it added.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 9
(PTI)  Controversial UN Chief Arms Inspector
Richard Butler has sought an explanation from the USA
about reports that Washington used his inspectors for its
own spying purposes in an apparent bid to clear his name.

Mr Butler, who angrily
brushed off rumours last week that he passed on
classified Iraqi information to the USA, held talks with
US Ambassador to the UN Peter Burleigh yesterday over
allega-tions that Washington used the UNSCOM to spy on
Iraq.

I have consulted
today and last night with senior US officials with
respect to assistance provided by the USA to the
UNSCOM, Mr Butler said in a statement shortly after
the meeting.

I call attention to
the statement made by the State Department spokesman on
January 7, namely that US support was specifically
tailored to facilitate the UNSCOM, the UN
inspectors mission, and for no other purpose and
was done at the direct request of the commission,
he said.

This accords with
the facts known to me, he said leaving the door
wide open to speculation that the USA might have used its
expertise in some fields to spy on Iraq without his
knowledge.

A Butler aide said the
statement was so worded because its upto the
Americans to speak for themselves on the issue of
whether Washington piggy-backed on the UN operations for
spying purposes.

US officials did not
comment on the talks between Mr Burleigh and Mr Butler.

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (PTI)
 The USA has drawn up a strategy to maintain its
weapons superiority over potential enemies in a world
marked by fast spread of technology, a defence news
report said.

The authorities are
making a strategy to maintain US technical superiority
over potential enemies, the paper said, quoting
Deputy Defence Secretary John Hamre.

Hamre, in a memo to the
Defence Secretarys strategic study group has asked
officials to study four principal issues concerned with
the US defence technology in an age dominated by the
rapid worldwide dissemination of hi-tech.

The group will study about
US ability to sustain threats from potential enemies, its
ability to develop trade and security policies that
control the flow of key technologies, implication of
migration to open networks essential for military
applications.

However, the US industry
is worried that the Hamre approach will lead to new
controls, placing it at a commercial disadvantage against
competitors.

If the Pentagon
doesnt work out a better approach, one
industry consultant warned, US companies are going
to get screwed.

BRUSSELS, Jan 9 (AP)
 Tintin turns 70 on Sunday, and though the cartoon
character has almost outgrown his target audience,
children from seven to 77, his appeal remains timeless.

Since the reporter with
the blond tuft of hair first appeared on January 10,
1929, in The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of
the Soviets, he and his talking dog, Snowy, have
confronted mad scientists and spies around the globe and
earned the adulation of millions.

Tintin is there to
keep justice and promote friendship, so it is a very
humanitarian theme, said Tchang Yi-Fei, who runs a
boutique in Brussels devoted to Tintin. She also is the
daughter of Chang Chong-Jen, the consultant who became a
character in the Tintin adventures.

Hes getting
ever more popular, said Yuriko Naruse, a fan from
Nagano, Japan, who was at the store purchasing Tintin
birthday cards and T-shirts.

To commemorate the
anniversary, publisher Casterman is republishing the
original Tintin book, long out of print.

Although the book is
artistically removed from the beauty of later volumes and
features an elementary, sometimes incoherent, storyline,
some, like French lawmaker Andre Santini, call Tintin
creator Herge a visionary considering the
later breakup of the Soviet Union.

In the book, Tintins
newspaper sends him to the Soviet Union to check out
whats happening. The Soviets are seen showing off
thriving factories to British Communists who all take it
in with comments like very nice and
beautiful

Dashing Tintin, however,
does investigative reporting and finds out that factories
are fake potemkin plants, with nothing behind the facade.

He goes on to protect
farmers from soldiers who come and steal their wheat,
making sure they will not starve. Later, he finds wheat
is used for export with the proceeds used for Soviet
propaganda.

While the Russian
people are dying, vast amounts of wheat are being
exported to show the so-called riches of the Soviet
paradise, Tintin comments.

The 5,00,000 printing is
only in French, unlike some volumes, which have been
published in 58 languages.

Russians have been
asking for a translation, but they still have to
wait, Tchang said.

Tintins adventures
took him to the Soviet Union and Africa, the opium dens
of the Far East and the skyscrapers of America, and even
the moon. Herge, the pen name for Belgian cartoonist
Georges Remi, used a unique style of solid, unbroken
lines that make dramatic perspectives.

Tintin may be Belgian to
the core, but the French have adopted him as their
fictive son.

In Paris, the National
Assembly is preparing a February 3 discussion with the
heady title: Tintin: Is he from the Left or from
the Right? The socialists and the right-wing
parties are already sharpening their knives.

The late French President,
General Charles de Gaulle, even once grumbled that
deep down, my only international rival is
Tintin.

The series was so
successful that after the end of Tintins adventures
in the Soviet Union, his return home from Russia to
Brussels was re-staged in 1930 with actors. Hundreds of
children showed up.

It was an early indication
of Tintins mass appeal. Each year 3 million books
are still sold worldwide.

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (AFP)
 US First Lady Hillary Clinton does not confide
anything personal in her mother, the older woman revealed
in a rare interview out t his week, and she isnt
over-emotional.

But the popular wife of
beleaguered President Bill Clinton is a very
sensitive person, Dorothy Rodham reportedly told
the glossy magazine Vanity Fair in its
February edition.

But she is able not
to over-emotionalise it. She doesnt go into one of
these horribly overwrought kinds of tizzies. Thats
one thing I never did either, she said.

In a lengthy profile of
the First Lady, the sort of work for which she is famous,
journalist Gail Sheehy tries to understand what keeps the
Clinton together despite the Presidents admitted
philandering.

AUSTIN, Jan 9 (AFP) 
Armed with unprecedented images from the powerful Hubble
telescope, US astronomers said they had unique
information of the formation of two new solar systems.
The images show two rings, similar to those around
Saturn, around two stars within our galaxy, which could
contain one or more, as yet invisible, new planets.
The rings surrounding the Ginat planets in our own
solar system are held in place by the gravitational force
of moons orbiting nearby, said Mr Brad Smith of the
University of Hawaii.

India only free country
in S. AsiaWASHINGTON:
Pluralistic India is the only free country in
South Asia, a leading US think tank that ranks nations as
per the comparative degree of political freedom and civil
liberties enjoyed by its citizens has said. All other
nations in the region fall either under the category of
not free or partly free as per
the latest ranking of Freedom House made public last
week. The Maldives and Bhutan are not free
while Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are
partly free, it said.  PTI

Monica invitedVIENNA:
An Austrian building tycoon, who regularly invites famous
actresses to Viennas opera ball, has invited Monica
Lewinsky this year, a report has said. Mr Richard Lugner,
who made a failed attempt to become Austrian President
last April, has invited the former White House intern to
this years ball on February 11, The Weekly News
said on Friday. I recently met Monicas mother
in New York and she helped me get in touch with her
agent, said the 66-year-old who last year succeeded
in luring Raquel Welch to share his private box.  AFP

Lawsuit dismissedLOS
ANGELES: A federal judge here has again thrown
out a lawsuit filed by a former beauty queen against the
Sultan of Brunei, claiming she was lured to the oil-rich
kingdom to be a sex slave. Former Miss USA Shannon La
Rhea Marketic sued several of the Sultans companies
after US District Judge Consuelo Marshall ruled the
Sultan and his brother, Prince Jefri, had diplomatic
immunity from such lawsuits. Ms Marketic claimed the
companies that the Sultan owned or had a financial
interest in, including The Beverly Hills Hotel, violated
the federal racketeering statute by facilitating the
Sultans alleged activities.  AFP

38 killedMOSCOW:
All 38 passengers were killed when a bus plunged into a
ravine near Georgias border with Russia, Itar-Tass
news agency reported. The bus was travelling through
mountainous terrain on roads 8,200 feet above sea level
towards a border crossing point near the village of
Kazbegi when it came off the road and plummeted some 820
feet late on Friday. The vehicle was bound for
Vladikavkaz in the southern Russian republic of North
Ossetia.  AFP

Charred bodiesLUANDA:
Charred bodies were found in the wreckage of a
UN-chartered plane that crashed in Central Angola on
December 26, an Angolan military source has said. The
source did not say how many bodies had been found. The
plane, a Hercules C-130 transport aircraft chartered by
the UN observer mission in Angola (MONUA), was carrying
14 persons, including 10 UN staff, when it crashed. The
wreckage was found at Boas-Aguas, about 50 km from the
central city of Huambo.  AFP

Cancer geneLONDON:
British scientists have said they had discovered a new
gene which appears to play a vital role in the
development of at least 50 per cent of cancers.
Scientists at Londons Institute of Cancer Research
told a news conference on Friday the discovery of the
mutated gene, called BCL10, could have a profound effect
on research and might provide a suitable target for a new
cancer drug. This is only the second gene to be
discovered which is implicated in such a large number of
cancers, said Mr Martin Dyer at the Institute of
Cancer Research. The first was P53 which is
abnormal in about 50 per cent of all cancers.
 Reuters

Iraqi defectsAMMAN:
A senior Iraqi intelligence official in eastern Europe
has defected, taking secret documents and codes with him,
an Iraqi opposition newspaper said on Saturday. Jaber
Salim (43) was Consul-General in Prague but in fact was
in charge of Iraqi intelligence for the Czech Republic,
Poland and Slovakia, according to an article in the
London-based newspaper Azzaman. Salim and his family fled
to Germany or the UK and asked for political asylum, it
said. He took with him secret documents and the
codes for the embassys diplomatic mail, it
added.  AFP

Secys
revelationLONDON:
Britains newly appointed Trade Secretary Stephen
Byers has acknowledged he had fathered a son when he was
just 17 years old. Mr Byers (45) issued a statement on
Friday saying that he had never made a secret of the
relationship and kept in touch with his 28-year-old son.
He also made a plea to the media to leave his son and his
sons mother alone. We are talking about
events which took place 28 years ago when both my
sons mother and myself were 17 years old, he
said. Mr Byers is not married but lives with his
long-term partner Jan. He has no other children.  Reuters

Heart monitorsLONDON:
British Airways said on Friday it would become the first
international airline to install heart monitors and
cardiac resuscitation devices on all its aircraft. Within
a year, the airline plans to fit cardiac monitors which
will transmit medical data via satellite to medical
experts on the ground, who will make a diagnosis and
advise cabin staff about treatment. British Airways also
will install defibrillators, which check a patients
heart rhythm and, if necessary, apply an appropriate
electric shock to re-establish the heart rate.